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Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?
6

Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

(OP)
I have my first career.. I was told it would consist of engineer tasks but I haven't done anything engineer related yet. I am pretty much a cad zombie drafting telecom towers all day. I am however paid like an engineer, if I put some overtime every week I am scheduled to earn over 65k. Should I be content? Or look for some real engineer work even if it means ill make 10k less?

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Is that extra $10k enough to make you wake up every morning and not hate what you do? Right now, it sure doesn't sound like it.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

How long have you been there?

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

If you are not sure if you are happy, then who the hell do you think will be sure of how YOU feel. "Should I be content"?????????????? Give me a break. Your feelings are a pretty personal thing that are not subject to audit.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

"Belief" is the acceptance of an hypotheses in the absence of data.
"Prejudice" is having an opinion not supported by the preponderance of the data.
"Knowledge" is only found through the accumulation and analysis of data.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

(OP)
Well let me be more clear. I dont want to ask YOU if im happy. I am asking you, experienced engineers if I should be content. Given the position type, money, entry level experience...should I be content? Or would it be more rewarding to my future If I looked for a real engineer position even if it means a pay cut.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

[jedi knight mind control] Yes Tom, you are content! [/jedi knight mind control]

Good luck,
Latexman

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

If you are not happy/content doing what you are doing, it will eventually reflect in your attitude & work output. Seeking other employment should be an ongoing process. The best time to look for a job is before you lose the one you have. Move on when you find something more suitable to your aspirations.

Money isn't everything ... but it sure helps pay the bills.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

How long have you been there is a good question.

If you haven't been there that long, you might still be in the entry level stages. Sorry...until you have more experience then you aren't really all that valuable as a decision maker. You might just be being brought up to speed and given some menial tasks until you learn the ropes and can understand more about the profession. Maybe you need to learn the basics before they are going to have you start meeting clients and making decisions.

Don't know...just my take. I just know I got pretty bent out of shape when I was early in my career because I wasn't getting responsibility...but I look back now and realize that I couldn't have handled it if I had been given it until I had gained some time just being in the game.

Your salary is pretty nice to have you just sitting there doing drafting...are you sure you aren't in line for something else in the near future?

That being said, whether you are religious or not, the parable from Luke in the New Testament is a good one in this situation and the quote that pertains is "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much". Do your best at the job you are given and when you do more (better) opportunities will open up.

PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

You need to look, find and get a new job. Once you're slotted as a competent CAD operator, you're likely to stay there forever. And if they feel guilty and slide you a few engineering tasks, you'll still be called on to do CAD in a pinch. And there will be a lot of "pinches." Unfortunately there's a real shortage of CAD personnel, so companies are loathe to lose one. But that's not your problem.
And since you can count your current job as experience, ther's no reason to have to take a job at $55k. There's jobs out there for new grads that pay $65k, and more if you have some experience. Just be honst, that you're been doing CAD, you've learned drawing layout and picked up a few things, but now you want to do your own designs.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

You be content you have a job, much less in engineering.

Chris
SolidWorks 11
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

(OP)
Thanks for the advice everyone! However I do encounter one problem. I have worked here for only 2 months and it took me a few months to find this job. I've read that it isnt recommended to show a job on your resume that is under 1 year in duration. So if I wear to leave this position I would have an emtpy space of over 5 months on my resume.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

2
unless your working environment is lousy or your boss is a jerk, you have not been there nearly long enough to know if you will eventually like engineering.

Or as Confucious say - "patience Grasshopper"...

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Don't worry about the hole in your resume. If anyone asks, you have a perfect story and it's honest. You took a couple of months to find a job and you've been doing CAD work just to be employed. It's not like you were in jail or something.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

You've only been there two months? Have you told your boss you are interested in taking on more challenging projects?

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

"I am asking you, experienced engineers if I should be content."

Really? Without knowing anything about you? And if everyone says you should be content, you will be? That hasn't worked for anyone else in the entire history of the human race. I don't know how good these guy's control of the Force is, but it's highly unlikely that it would make much difference. The bottom line is that you ARE NOT content, and no matter what anyone says or does, that's not going to change much.

TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

You're young. 65k isn't bad unless you're in Chicago, NY, or Cali. You're getting experience and bailing on the job before a year mark is a death sentence unless you got sexually harassed or have a documented moral issue.

You can either:

1) Make some money, get some experience (1~2 years), and slide on to another job before you get pigeon holed.

2) Ask for more responsibility, take it on without asking for more money (you just got there, remember that) and get some meat on the resume so you can pick your targets a bit on the next job hunt.

3) Take initiative as stated in 2, impress the suits, and try to move up.

There's a lot of b*tch work on the ladder to becoming a PE (You're not an engineer if you don't have a stamp - especially civil/structural), if you don't like doing CAD work and basic calculations, get a masters degree.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Life is too short to be unhappy. Talk to your boss, but don't be stupid - jobs don't grow on trees these days. Ask what future work is coming down the pipeline for you. She/he should be able to see 1-5 years down the road. Are there other Engineers there you can compare notes with? Then, make a decision. Are you in, or out? If out, discreetly find a job you want, THEN give notice.

Good luck,
Latexman

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

(OP)
I do live in Chicago... 65k for an entry civil position isn't good? Sources say 55k is average.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

(OP)
Thanks for the overall advice.. I won't stop searching, and hopefully I can find a engineer position that will provide experience necessary to fulfill the P.E. requirement. Jmcoop you mentioned a master degree will get me out of basic calcs and cad work.. How so? Are you assuming a master degree will give me a management position?

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

I was referring to cost-of-living vs. income... 55k means very different lifestyles depending on where you hang your hat (At-least that's the argument that my California based company can pay 60% of what they pay locals because we operate in southeast).

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

2 months? Geez...give it some time. I barely knew how to find the water cooler at 2 months in my first job. Give them some time to see your skills and stay diligent in what you are being given. You are way to green to be worrying about the type of responsibility you will get at this point. I have found that it normally takes 6 months to get where people feel comfortable about your skills and are willing to give you more responsibility.

PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

You've only been working 2 months and are already complaining about mainly doing CAD work.

Hmm, either the non exempt world really is different or you need to just suck it up and get some time under your belt.

Posting guidelines FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm? (probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

you are in a real engineer position. It's called entry level or alternatively peon. no amount of degrees or job hopping will change that. in 6 - 12 months you step onto the second rung of the ladder which is commonly called green horn. After two years, you might achieve to the position of junior engineer. Eventually you will reach the position of engineer. You might be able to take an exam and get registered at that point. At which point you can look for a higher paying, more lucrative position.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Are you CADing because times are tough, or is this SOP for your company?

Good luck,
Latexman

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

These were some of my entry level job tasks:

Walking around the entire factory site counting trailers (we didn't know how many we had)

Collating absenteeism from the assembly lines into a weekly report for managers

Manning the wages counter after yet another stuff up (all hands on deck)

Photocopying engineer's reports for them

and yes Virginia, those did count towards my experience as an engineer.

So I think actually designing stuff as an entry level job is pretty damn cool in comparison.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

As a professional engineer, I would say sit tight and draft for your life if you want career fulfillment. Your project managers need to get to know you and know that you will do what they ask, efficiently, and responsively. A little bit of dedication to a menial task goes a really long way to building the trust of the licensed engineers. Once you have that trust, you will be given more complex tasks. Without that trust, you will get nothing but more drafting. $65k is very good for a new grad. .

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

(OP)
Francesca and Greg, I completely understand I am "green" and therefore wouldnt be suprised if I even took out the garabage every friday. The problem is, there isnt much of an engineering role here. It is telecom after all. How many of you engineers dont really do engineering work, but are still well off?

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

You have only been there 2 MONTHS -- Give me a break ---you want some whine with that cheese. Get a life ... You got a good paying job and god forbid - you might learn something. Hang in there and call in a year!!

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

I foresee your future resume consisting of job hopping. Either that or you need to really get calibrated. Engineering is NOT doing one particular thing ALL the time. It's a process that consists of a series of event and activities that lead from conception to final product. In telecom, it may take years before a project completes and a product is actually issued. Only certain phases of the project might actually entail lots of detailed engineering, while other phases involve cranking drawings, and even other phases involve late nights debugging.

TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Also, ability, speed, enthusiasm, etc., all factor into what assignments you get.

The fact that you are bored and appear bored may well factor into someone giving a plum engineering assignment to someone else.

TTFN
FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Been there, done that, sympathize. First job was sitting at an aerospace company drafting board. Mind-numbingly boring. and affected my behavior in negative ways (started spontaneously insulting my friends). Was learning manual drafting techniques to 0.01 inch tolerance, hated every minute of it because is was NOT what I wanted to do and knew CAD would replace that skill. I quit after 8 months.

"Work" is not like "school", where you have definitive, short term activities with conclusive results. "Work" is more long term marathon-type stuff, vague, frustrating, and you learn to live for & seek out the thrill tasks. And develop hobbies and circles of friends in order to have a creative outlet and maintain your sanity.

Learn what you can, master it if possible. Make you desires known to the managers (politely, diplomatically, non-threateningly....they rarely teach that in school). If the tasks you are learning to master now, and the perceived future direction with you are presented, don't align with your "career goals" (if you have any at all), then do what you can and work to move on. It is absolutely imperative that you maintain a positive image of your character for folks to remember after you depart. Part of the graduation process is to explore and determine what it is that will get you up early in the morning. If you find that, you stop working for a living and start playing for a living. And it's damn sweet if God allows you that Grace and lets it happen to you. Let me tell you: it's a glorious day when that happens.

Then life tends to happen to you, spouses, deaths, other life changing events, & your priorities change. Then all you want is some job security and to go home at the end of the day, sit in the Lazy-Boy, drink a beer, and yell at the TV.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering
www.bluetechnik.com

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Dawg - a star for you last paragraph.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

My first job out of college was as a contract drafter-designer. I told my employer clearly that my goal was to do this work to make up for lack of internship experience (due to military obligations) and move up to engineering as soon as possible. They responded by making me an engineer six months later at the end of my contract.

Will it go this way for you? Who can tell. Still, it is up to you to manage your career direction. No one else will.

Meanwhile, two months is nothing in work terms, barely long enough to hold your breath. Practice patience, STFU, watch, and LEARN.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Since you asked, I will offer my view. It has been my experience that an awful lot of engineering jobs aren't really engineering work. In many companies you are a glorifed drafter, drawing checker, or spreadsheet jockey. I work in the defense industry and in my line of work where projects tend to be large, complicated, and multi-year, there are whole groups of engineers (some of them very senior and well paid) who do nothing more than manage databases of project requirements. They don't design anything, they don't calculate anything, they just create databases and then during the project lifecycle they verify that the requirements have been met. Personally I would get more satisfaction from watching paint dry. I know senior Quality Engineers who spend their day writing procedures. In many companies a project engineer basically is in charge of project budget and schedule and interfacing with the customer.

Unless you work in R&D or work for a large enough company where you can specialize in something, say structural engineering, your days can largely be filled with tasks that are mind-numbingly dull, puncutuated by some occasional real engineering.

I personally don't see job hopping as a bad thing, especially early in your career. I look at those who look down on job hopping as being old fashioned. But with that being said, having a few jobs that you only worked a few months at probably is pusihing it to the extreme. Even if you hate your current job, I would stick it out for at least a year. Get some experience under your belt and see if things improve. If the handwriting is on the wall, then it is time to jump ship. Changing jobs gives you an opportunity to experience different things. I have been at both extremes from my first internship where the engineering department consisted of my boss and myself, to mega-corporations where I was one of hundreds, if not thousands of engineers. I hated the extremes and discovered that I was happy at medium sized companies where I had the opportunity to be a big fish in a little pond, but at the same time there was interesting work, opportunity to specialize, and room for advancement.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Two months--you're still in "orientation" phase. You're drafting; that's technical. Do it with your eyes open and your brain switched on and learn, learn, learn. You have the benefit of seeing the end result of more senior engineers' designs: clever details, standard details, unusual solutions to problems. Check in with some of them and ask questions to learn even more: e.g. I see you did such-and-such in this situation and thus-and-so in another situation. How can I, as a young developing engineer, tell if the situation merits such-and-such or thus-and-so for a solution? That sort of thing.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

By the way, quite a few 'famous' engineers started out in the 'drawing office' or similar. For instance:

R. J. Mitchell of Spitfire fame.

Sydney Camm of Hurricane, Hunter & Harrier fame.

Henry Folland responsible for the Gladiator & Gnat amongst others.

Geoffrey de Havilland Mosquito etc.

Now you can argue it was a different industry in different time & place etc. but still. If starting 'on the board' was good enough for them then I'm hesitant to suggest most of us are too good for it.

Posting guidelines FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm? (probably not aimed specifically at you)
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Job hopping might be old fashioned to a degree but it's the old fashioned guys who are doing the hiring usually so be careful.

Doing what you love is important but so is showing some kind of reliability for a time period to a company. No one wants to hire someone who they are worried is going to get bored in 3 months and quit. It's not worth the cost to train them.

My opinion is to stick it out and learn to draft. It's not the worst skill to have in any engineering field. When a good opportunity does present itself, go for it, but don't run away after 2 months because it's not fun or you will be changing jobs every 2 months for a long time.

If it was fun all the time, they wouldn't call it work!

PE, SE
Eastern United States

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death!"
~Code of Hammurabi

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

(OP)
Wow this thread grew quite a bit. For those of you saying I'm whining, I'm really not. I'm just inexperienced and getting to know the real world of engineering. The company I work for looks like it needs some young structural guys and project managers. I'll talk To my supervisor about how I can earn these positions. just out of curiosity ( I know you know nothing about this company) would you recommend a masters and focus on structural, or MBA and work for that management position? And if there really is no future for me here ill stick it out.. I'm bound to learn something.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

MBA is useless in an engineering company. In my last office (same company), there were four people with MBAs. Only one was a project/staff manager. The other 3 went into debt and didn't even get a salary boost. Engineering project management in Civil engineering anyway is 90% technical. Our contracts for public design work are cost + overhead + fixed fee. Don't bust the budgeted hours and you get your margin. Being able to budget accurately requires a solid technical understanding of what it takes to design the work. There is so little MBA-type management in engineering and most of the people in those positions were rising-star project managers. Our CEO is an exception... he's a lawyer (with an engineering undergrad). But don't let that red herring side-track you. There's an engineer in my current office with law degree and he's a project manager and doesn't earn any more than any of the other project managers. If you're serious about Structural Engineering a Masters is essential.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Caddy?
I have been doing CAD work off and on for 20 years. I guess I must hate myself. Now I find myself going to another trainging class for CAD, this is so funny. I think you need a hobby, so that you don't whine so much at this job. When you stop hating that job, they might look at you as reliable and send you out to what your drawing. Maybe you should look at what your drawing and figure out how they arrived at this design?

Stick with it, get a hobby, quit whinning, do more when they ask you. How many times has this question been asked here?

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

2 months? LOL

When I got my first proper position (or job title) after University my first 5 months were spent on hopping between CAD and just sitting in the library, reading all the various standards relating to the department I worked in. After becoming a semi-competent CAD jockey I was then moved from the Structures Dept. into the Marine Engineering Department and guess what i did there for another 5 months?

Just when I thought Engineer was just a posh term for Draftsman, I was given my first place with a design team and it was horrible. I was still calculating like a student and that is just not good enough for the work place.

Six years on and now I'm in charge of my own designs but most of that is drawing whatever it is I've just run the numbers for.

TL;DR


Be patient and try to do the best you can with whatever it is you're given to do and soon, you're attention to detail will be noticed and you'll go further up the ladder. If you start job hopping you'll only ever be sliding down the snakes. [/waffle]

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

The first two months at my first job out of college I was working 80 hours a week as a construction materials technician, making concrete cylinders, logging truck tickets, and so on.
The guy in charge of the CMT department (not my boss) figured he could get a good profit out of me by billing the client for 80 hours and paying me salary for 40. I was making the same amount as an hourly worker making $8 an hour.
After a couple of months my boss reeled it back in and I spent more hours in the office and cut back my hours. The time I spent doing the field work was invaluable towards my experience as an engineer. If you don't pay your dues you'll be less of an engineer.
As most posters have said, two months is nothing. I would not leave a job without serving at least one year unless there were some egregious circumstances.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

When in doubt, it is better to be over paid and not content than under paid and not content. This is coming from someone who makes 55k and spends all their tome doing engineering work and managing projects.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

CivilTom,

Make the most of your time and experience on the drafting. Keep track of the time in man-hours it takes you to start with a blank sheet (or screen) and end up with a professionally endorsed drawing, including back-drafting and recycle. Soon you will start being asked for man-hour estimates, you will start being asked to coordinate the efforts of several CADD folks, maybe checking the work done by peers...

The "engineering" that you aspire to is coming, trust me. Oddly enough, I have been in the engineering business for 30 years, 29 of which for an EPC contractor, and one of the two things I regret never having learned is CADD. (The other is HYSYS.). If I could CADD my own work I would have it made right now.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

I'm thinking we'll see the OP on here in a few months asking if he should be content with that mind numbing position of a telecom tower designer. IMHO, whether or not the OP is a CAD jocky or designing, this position is not likely to be a resume builder.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

(OP)
Mainman that is what I am afraid of. A history of Drawing towers won't impress a possible future employer. Perhaps I can morph this position into something that may actually build my resume...would a project engineer type position managing drafters be somewhat appealing for an engineer résumé

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

I have stayed out of this until now, But CivilTom you are paying your dues.
When I had people working for me I would hand them a job , get out of the way and see how they handled it.
If they did ok I would give them a more involved task. I was looking for confidence and competance.

The thing I was also looking for was attitude, if I got griping, moaning, comments of this isn't my job etc.,
That person did not last long.
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

Actually, a history of either drawing or engineering towers wont impress a possible future employer unless all they do is tower design. If that's something you want to make a career out of, go for it.

I do think EIT's should be CAD jockies for awhile to learn how things go together and how a set of drawings is produced. If you've only been at it for 2-months, I think it's unreasonable for you to be noncontent.

RE: Not sure if I'm happy at work. Advice?

I'll assume for the time being that designing towers /is/ mind numbing. So what do energetic engineers do when faced with mind numbing repetitive tasks? (well OK sometimes they get someone else to do them but that wasn't the point)

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

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